John Napier

This free course looks at Scotsman John Napier (1550-1617) and his invention which radically altered the course of mathematics. Napier dabbled in mathematics for over 40 years and near the end of his life he introduced his tables of logarithms which drastically reduced the work needed to do complicated calculations, such as those required in astronomy and navigation. Napier’s ‘excellent brief rules’ were quickly adopted and improved upon.This OpenLearn course provides a sample of Level 2 study in Mathematics.

• Introduction
• Learning outcomes
• 1 Excellent Brief Rules
• 1 Excellent Brief Rules
• 1.1 Background to Napier and his work
• 1.2 Napier's bones
• 1.3 Napier's approach to logarithms
• 1.4 Napier and motion
• 1.5 Napier and Briggs
• 1.6 Spreading the word about logarithms
• 1.7 Kepler and logarithms
• Conclusion
• Acknowledgements